DataLogger is a Yerevan-based company, specialised in smart machines and data acquisition control systems. WiseLogger, created by DataLogger, is a flexible, configurable, and user-friendly turn-key solution which data loggers can use in a wide variety of applications, such as industrial manufacturing and automation, remote monitoring, automotive industry, data collection, pharmaceutical manufacturing and research.

In 2017, DataLogger received an EU-SMEDA Innovation Matching Grant (IMG), funded by the European Union under its EU4Business initiative.

“The grant gave us opportunity to start off, establish the company, have the first hires, and create a lab with required equipment for building hardware prototypes,” said DataLogger co-founder Rafayel Ghasabyan.

Ghasabyan explains what motivated his team: “While working at RAFA Solutions and building custom solutions for various customers all over the world, we noticed the need to build universal data logging solutions, which can satisfy a broad range of customers, but still be easy to use and configurable without any software programming knowledge.”

The company is currently building both hardware and software parts for the data logging solution, which will be sold to several specific industries.

Ghasabyan said the WiseLogger technology was unique in providing a very much user-friendly solution that does not require knowledge of any programming languages to be able to use it with different sensors and actuators.

“With the very first prototype of our product we decided to use National Instruments sbRIO platform as the main computing unit, and the actual analogue data acquisition board is designed by us. The unique part of our solution is the way we are going to sell it after we have the final manufacturing samples, as well as how those data loggers are being programmed and used,” he said.

Ghasabyan said the team was still small, as the startup is still in the R&D stage and doesn’t have many sales.

“We try to survive with our own funds. The current team is comprised of the two founders and a handful of people. Some of the work is outsourced,” he explained.

For the startup, the U.S. market is the main target, although the EU market can also be considered.

“The vision of our startup has shaped itself a lot during the last year, especially after receiving the grant and the opportunity to dedicate a lot of time to market research and development of the product.

“Now it is critical for us to understand the feasibility of such a product, as we have discovered that it is going to hit a huge competition just after the release of the major version. Also, the first sales and feedback from our customers helped us have a more realistic forecast,” said Rafayel Ghasabyan.

He predicted 2019 would be the most challenging year for DataLogger, as it “will function in a survival mode”.

About EU-SMEDA

Since 2017, the ‘Support to SME Development in Armenia’ (EU-SMEDA) project, which is funded by the European Union under the EU4Business initiative and implemented by GIZ in cooperation with the Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF), has been supporting Armenian startups with two types of grant – Innovation Matching Grants (IMG) and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship (STEP) grants.